be a student, not a follower

Salt Lake City Startup Weekend

Feb 6th, 2012

Over the last three days I have been attending the first Startup Weekend held in Salt Lake City, Utah. I learned about the event from my cousin Peter Harris who works for University Venture Fund. I have to say, this even was awesome.

It started on Thursday night when a group of 100 attendees (Designers, Developers, and Business Dudes) plus and additional 100 people or so from the public met together in a large auditorium and listened to 55 different pitches on business and technology ideas.

The 55 ideas were narrowed down to 15. From there, the 100 attendees formed themselves into teams with the purpose of building a business over the following 54 hours. We all worked in a large auditorium, with each team having their own round table. Designers and developers stayed up late and got up early cranking on code and designs. The business guys were on the phones validating ideas and looking for customers. It was insane.

As a developer, when I get some code working or finish a feature, I tend to get excited and clap or shout random sayings. Being in a large auditorium you would think that maybe these random outburst would need to be suppressed. It turns out that a lot of people are like me this sense. When a random out burst occurred or a random clap was given signifying a task was completed, the whole auditorium would fire up in clapping and shouting. It was awesome. It gave you more energy to persist moving forward.

I am looking forward to the next startup weekend to be held in SLC and am considering traveling to attend events held in other states.

I need to give a special shout out for Steve Seow with Microsoft and the Bizspark program. It was good to see their representation at this little event and for all the free stuff they offered to help get our little companies off the ground!